Harvest time.

We have 7,000,000 tomatoes in the greehouse.
Yellow ones on the left and red on the right.
Its been a long wait as these are mainly continental
varieties that need lots of sunshine and warmth.
The weather here in Scotland this summer has been
cold, wet and windy with occasional sunny intervals.




Harvested all of the onions, garlic and shallots yesterday.


Have to leave them in the potting shed to dry for a few days then I'll


string them together and hang them up for use over the winter.


The garlic was an unexpected success because I did not expect


it to do well in our cool climate.



These are my runner or string beans.


They are almost eight feet high and producing lots of pods now.


I'll freeze a few pounds of them for use over the winter.



To the left are twelve Brussels Sprout plants. Most have a few small sprouts


so I'll harvest a few pounds of them also for the freezer.


Christmas dinner would'nt be the same without sprouts.



A good crop of leeks this year. I'll leave them in over winter


and just use them as required. The bushy stuff is Florence Fennel.


Tastes a bit like aniseed and I'm not convinced that I like it very much so might


not bother with it next year.



Another mutant courgette has invaded the greenhouse.


I gave the last one to the Sultan, a Turkish restaurant


in Forfar. It was aprox 18 inches long and was pressing


against the greenhouse glass, so I had to cut it.


The Brechin Horticultural Society are having a flower and veg show


in the next week or so, so I might exhibit some of my produce.

Compost.

We keep this compost cage at the top of the garden. All our organic household waste goes in here, including grass cuttings and garden/greenhouse waste. We should be able to use it next spring. Within a couple of days of filling it to the top it rots down again. I thinkthe hard job will be laying it on a tarp and mixing it as its layered with grass, organic household waste, eggshells, cardboard, garden waste, coffee grounds, shredded paper etc.
The are two free coffee machines at the Halliburton facility where I work and the guy saves the coffee grounds for me.
Coffee grounds are helpful in more ways than just compost. Slugs and snails dont go near them.

A good weekend fishing.

The pics are all dated 05/01/2004 because I
could'nt be bothered changing the date after
fitting new batteries.
Had a 24hr session on my favourite place in Scotland, Loch Oich, with Sandra, Meggy and my mate Stuart. This is my boat, Chrissie11 taking a rest. Quite important to find a nice sandy bit to beach the boat. This saves unneccessary scratches on the hull.
Weather on the Friday evening was fine, and we sat out till 11pm and had a glass or two of wine and a barbecued burger, pulled in the baits and hit the sack.
Saturday morning as usual for this part of the world it rained for about 4 hours then heavy showers for the rest of the day, but I was still up and about at 6am, getting a wee fire going and casting out fresh baits. Altogether I had 7 pike ranging from about 5lb to 15lb, all carefully unhooked and returned to fight another day.



This is me about to return a wee pike of about 5lb, the first of many.

And another one goes back. You will have noticed that
Meg is never far away when I have a fish.
Apart from all of the electronics, floats and clickers
she is my best early warning system. She carefully
watches the reels and floats, and listens for beeps
alerting me to the first sign of a bite.


Best fish of the session was this one of about 15lb. She took bait no. 4 and after a good hard fight I was able to unhook her in the water allowing her to swim off. 5 minutes later she took bait no.1 but had to be netted this time as I could'nt see the hooks. Check those teeth! This old battleaxe has chomped through many a small fish in her day.
Nice to see this ocean going yacht going through the waterway under a big genoa. Most of them use engine power as the loch is so narrow its hardly worth the amount of tacking they would have to do, but the wind was just perfect on this occasion.

These 12 foot Fox Warrior rods are all fitted with Abu 6501 c3 multiplier reels, big orange floats or bobbers and set with the clicker on these "Fox mx blue" electronic bite alarms. When a fish picks up a bait I want as much warning as possible so I can strike before the pike has a chance to either swallow or drop the bait.
Nice to have the same reel on all four rods. so whichever rod I pick up, it will always have the same action.

Harvest time again, and a hot dog.

Its scorchingly hot here today, in between some very heavy showers of rain. Meg is sheltering under a bush from the sun, but still steaming. There is plenty of water for her to drink nearby.
She had a blockage the other day and had to go to the vet. Meg has a tendancy to swallow stones and they sometimes get lodged in the small intestine. The vet has told us to muzzle her but I'm not keen to o this. A muzzled dog is stigmatised as a biter, and also has no protection against attack from another dog. The operations cost about £450-£600 a time and this would have been her third and last time under the knife. Vets will not do bowel sugery on a dog more than three times, so next time may be her last.

These are my peppers. A mix of chili and capsicum. Should have plenty by September.

Courgettes (zuchini) and cucumbers.

Squillions of toms. Aparently, when the weather gets too cold for them you can wrap them in newspaper and put them in a cool dark place to ripen.


Broad beans are nice in just about any savoury dish, and also make a nice humous.

Brussels sprouts are just starting to form on the stalks of these plants. Should be ready about November. I'll leave them out over the winter as they slow right down in cold weather. And we are guaranteed cold weather here.

Some interesting veg here. The bushy stuff is Florence Fennel. These will be ready in the next couple of weeks so must try to find some recipe ideas. The curly brassica is Kale, a vegetable well suited to Scotlands climate. This is a old fashioned vegetable from the golden days before fridges and canned veg. 100 years ago most homes in the UK would have grown some kale as it would be the only green veg available after December. Use it in soups and broth.


Swedes here, soup would'nt be the same without Swede.

Heres another pic of kale in its early stage. I reckon you could plant this in gravel and it would flourish.